After Being Caught Red-Handed On A Ring Doorbell, A Rogue Trader Is Jailed

A rogue trader who attempted to con money from a helpless pensioner was found out thanks to the victim’s Ring doorbell camera.

Tommy Taylor, 31, targeted the 74-year-old resident by demanding money for roofing work that had never been carried out.

The victim’s son had installed a video doorbell on his father’s home in Fernhill Heath, near Worcester, after concerns he was being targeted by fraudsters.

Mr Taylor was then filmed continually banging on the pensioner’s front door and living room window on November 12, 2022, and was heard soliciting payment for the non-existent work, saying that he was from the thingy and that he hadn’t been paid, and that the elderly man had probably given it to someone else.

The conman was jailed for 26 weeks after doorbell footage was shared with the police and will pay a £150 victim surcharge.

The video shows the victim opening the door and Taylor was heard demanding payment for the non-existent work.

The victim tells him that he’s paid him.

Taylor responds, and that he hasn’t and that he’s the manager from the thingy, and that he’s not been paid.

He then says that the man probably gave the money to someone else and that he was the manager and then points to the logo on his fleece.

The pensioner then says he’s going to call the police and Taylor flees, telling the man that he will send the thingy then – it’s not clear what the thingy refers to.

The pensioner’s son then sent the video to West Mercia Police who arrested Taylor at his home in Sandy Lane, Stourport, Worcestershire.

Taylor denied being involved and claimed he’d been sent to the address by other people who’d completed the work.

Taylor was found culpable of deception by making fraudulent representations, behaving dishonestly, and intending to make a gain for himself or another.

He was jailed for 26 weeks and summoned to pay a £150 victim surcharge following the trial at Worcester Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday.

Police are now urging people to install similar systems to safeguard their own homes and those of their families, especially if they’re elderly.

Detective Constable Simon Lloyd said that he was pleased to see this verdict and hope this offers some closure and reassurance to the victim and his family.

He said that the criminal targeting of vulnerable persons in West Mercia would not be tolerated and they would investigate every avenue to bring those defenders to justice.

This should have come with a much longer prison time, and the pensioner should have been paid handsome compensation by this criminal who won’t be in jail long enough to dirty the sheets. This man is absolute pondlife, and hopefully, when this man is an OAP, someone will try to con him out of his life savings.

And what kind of deterrent is this sentence?

It’s also equally foolish to be caught on camera and then denying involvement, and wow, 26 weeks jail time, I bet that’s taught him, what a great justice system we have!

Perhaps the Government should reintroduce National Service. It would give the youths of today discipline and some sort of qualification at the end of it.

At least Taylor had the decency to stand in front of the doorbell camera, making sure all the evidence was captured – the only thing missing was a proper sentence, but let’s face it, he really wasn’t the sharpest knife in the toolbox, was he?

The High Court Hears Evidence From Prince Harry

Prince Harry began giving evidence at the High Court for his phone hacking trial against the publisher of the Daily Mirror, becoming the first royal to testify in open court since 1891.

Harry was sporting a navy suit and dark purple tie as he entered the witness box and swore an oath to tell the truth on the Bible beneath his father the Sovereign’s coat of arms.

The Duke of Sussex jetted into the United Kingdom from California on Monday and looked relaxed and even smiled as he entered the High Court’s modern annexe, the Rolls Building, saying good morning to the waiting press.

However, he was criticised by one of Britain’s leading judges and accused of wasting court time after missing the first day of his historic case, to celebrate his daughter Lilibet’s birthday in Montecito before flying to Britain.

Harry and three others are suing the Mirror group, claiming the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and The People newspaper hacked their phones or conducted other illegal activity, which has been denied.

In 1891 Edward VII gave evidence when a slander action was brought by a card player accused of cheating at baccarat at a time when gambling was prohibited. His appearance in the witness box left Queen Victoria unamused, but it’s also not known what Harry’s father, King Charles III, feels about his son’s historic court appearance.

The Duke of Sussex will be in the High Court witness box for two days this week, twice as long as he spent when he came for the King’s Coronation, and it’s not clear if he will see his father or brother this week, or meet his cousin Princess Eugenie’s new son Ernest, who was born last Tuesday.

He made a flying visit for the momentous day his father King Charles was crowned, spending about 28 hours in Britain before flying back to California. However, the duke appears to have more time to devote to his legal crusade against the Mirror newspaper’s publisher.

He was expected to spend a full day in the witness box at the High Court and at least half the following day.

In fact, he could have begun giving his evidence, but he didn’t fly to the United Kingdom until Sunday night so that he could help celebrate his two-year-old daughter’s birthday.

An exasperated judge rebuked the duke’s barrister when it became clear the royal witness was unattainable for the opening day of his own case suing the publisher of the Mirror newspaper.

Does this mean that Harry believes the world rotates around him? Well, it actually doesn’t matter because the judge certainly wasn’t impressed.

Harry is so concerned about the environment, yet he flies back and forth over the Atlantic whilst preaching to the rest of us, and it looks like the ego has landed, so let’s sit back and grab some popcorn.

And he’s not a royal anymore. He decided to give that up. Now he’s just a bloke in court like numerous others.

When Rishi Sunak Meets Joe Biden, He Will Outline Britain’s Vision For Leading The World In Policing AI Threats

Rishi Sunak will outline his ambition for Britain to lead the world in tackling the dangers posed by artificial intelligence when he meets Joe Biden this week.

The Prime Minister is looking to launch a global AI watchdog in London and hopes to host an international summit to devise rules on AI regulation.

He will discuss the proposals with the US president during talks at the White House. Rishi Sunk is visiting Washington DC on Tuesday for talks with Joe Biden on Ukraine and security but AI will also be high up on the agenda.

Last week some of the most prominent names in technology warned that AI could lead to the destruction of humankind, calling it to be prioritised alongside risks such as nuclear war.

There are fears that humanity could lose control of super-intelligent systems or that AI could launch cyberattacks or endanger democracy by propagating mass disinformation.

Rishi Sunak believes the UK is well placed to bring allies together to agree on an approach to tackle the threats while also harnessing the opportunities.

Sunday night a government source said that the Prime Minister was very alive to the need for international alignment as the technology evolves to ensure we can benefit from the opportunities but manage the risks.

And it was said that the United Kingdom was well placed to take a leading role in that and the first step was engaging with their allies from around the world.

Rishi Sunak has been meeting technology bosses in recent weeks to discuss AI and said last week that while it could bring massive benefits it needs to be done in a safe and secure way.

He said that he thought the UK could play a leadership role because ultimately, they’re going to grapple with this problem and solve it if they work together not just with the companies, but with countries around the world.

He said it was something that he’d already been discussing with other leaders at the G7 summit the other week, and that he would be doing it again when he visits the US.

Rishi Sunak is said to believe that the UK is well positioned to bring together allies from across the world post-Brexit, as it had done with the Aukus security pact and Hiroshima Accord, a strategic partnership with Japan.

Rishi Sunak’s plan is clear. Do nothing at all but talk big about what he’s going to do.

In fact, the UK Government would benefit greatly from Artificial Intelligence because clearly, the UK Government doesn’t have any actual brains, and perhaps Rishi Sunak should have a week at home and talk to the British people. But instead, he showboats and grandstands all over the globe and throws billions of pounds that we haven’t got at any person who asks for it. Rishi Sunak should start taking his position as Prime Minister seriously or stand aside and let someone else in.

This all sounds like a distraction because you can’t put AI back in the box any more than you can reverse splitting the atom, and clearly, Rishi Sunak is the ship’s fool and somebody is pulling his strings and it’s not the voters, and Rishi Sunak is the janitor who says a lot, but does nothing.

He should be concentrating on getting rid of those that revel in the perks and yank their noses out of the trough because eventually, taxpayers are going to revolt, and it can’t come anytime soon.

It Doesn’t Pay To Work Hard

Angry workers have slammed a universal income benefit trial handling £1,600 a month to people who will be paid without having to work.

A group of 30 people have been selected to take part in what will be England’s first-ever trial of a universal income scheme.

Over the course of two years, they will receive the monthly sum without any conditions while researchers monitor what effects the money has on their lives, but hard-working Britons have lashed out at the scheme, with one saying that pensioners like them have worked all their lives and only getting £205 a week, yet someone will be getting paid almost double and that hard-working doesn’t pay.

Another lashed out saying that they’ve worked all their life, 40-50 hours a week and are due to retire, but that with their state pension and small works pension, they will get nowhere what they’re getting a month on the universal credit scheme, and that it’s not right.

The money will be given to 15 participants in Jarrow, South Tyneside, and 15 in East Finchley, north London.

They will be paid without a requirement to work or to show a willingness to work, but numerous people didn’t seem convinced, and one Twitter user predicted it would lead to unemployment rates shooting up.

Another explained his issue with the scheme, and that there was a massive problem with it because there will be people, many millions, working 40 hours a week, with the costs of work, and earning less than the Universal Basic Income Trial, but that they would still be taxed to fund UBI which they said was extremely unfair by every measure.

Not everyone was against the scheme, however. One said he was interested to see the results and pointed it had worked in other countries.

Another argued it would result in certainly happier people.

Cleo Goodman, Co-Founder of Basic Income Conversation, said that no one should ever be facing poverty, having to choose between heating and eating, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and that basic income has the potential to simplify the welfare system and tackle poverty in Britain.

Will Stronge, director of research at the think tank Autonomy which is running the scheme, said the £1,600 figure was a substantial amount.

He said that a guaranteed basic income could be transformative for welfare in this country.

Elon Musk made a good point about all of this a while ago and said that universally state-funded income will become standard as Artificial Intelligence takes over the vast amount of jobs and that it could be done faster, more accurately and no doubt ultimately a lot cheaper. Sad really, but that’s the way the world is going.

And of course, the Tories despise the working man.

However, if money is just handed out and not earnt, will it actually have any real value?

Today, £1,600 doesn’t go very far, but what it would mean is that people wouldn’t have to worry about basic needs such as rent and food, and keeping a roof over their heads, but I do wonder who will fund all of this once the UK runs out of taxpayers because it will.

The Bank of England will probably just print money so that people can have it, or there will be no monetary system. It will go straight to our accounts so we can spend invisibly.

I mean where do we get it from now? It’s printed endlessly.

If you can live on £1,600 a month, then good for you, but many people have to pay their mortgage, but I guess having a monthly safety net is always a good thing to pay for things like bills et cetera, and of course it will also be a tremendous asset to everyone’s mental health.

Construction Of A ‘Death Trap’ Estate Near A Cyanide Dumping Site

Terrified residents claim a new 48-housing development will be a possible death trap which is being built on land that’s next to a historic waste site filled with drums of cyanide which could start leaking underground at any point.

Horrified mother of two Jessica Ramsay, conveyed concerns of some other residents, saying that it was an incident waiting to happen and could be catastrophic.

The freelance admin worker has slammed her local council for failing to carry out adequate soil tests on the old killer tip site at Wolston, Warwickshire, which formed part of discussions in Parliament decades ago.

Mrs Ramsay, and her retired parents, are now planning to conduct tests themselves on the ground to find out just how contaminated it actually is.

The worried mum, speaking exclusively to a newspaper outlet, said that they haven’t begun testing yet but they will as soon as they’ve bought the kits.

She said that Rugby Borough Council had done some basic testing but it was non-evasive, and, they believe, inadequate, and that not enough was being done to monitor it, so they had no choice but to test themselves.

The huge Spitfire Homes development, on former allotments in front of the higher disused waste tip site, is near the village centre ensconced between Rugby and Coventry.

The first phase of work started in March and is currently at the digging and drainage stage.

Mrs Ramsay, 36, lives opposite on the Warwick Road side with her parish councillor husband and two children, Isabel, aged two and a half, and eight-year-old Oliver.

She said that the site was a potential death trap, and that if the barrels of cyanide that were buried 10 feet underground started the leak, which conservation experts have said could after many years. It would be almost at the level of the new homes on lower ground and the existing allotments.

She also said that it could be catastrophic and that it was an accident waiting to happen.

Her mum Lesley Blay, 74 added that they welcome new people to their lovely village when the houses are built, but that the residents have a duty of care to make sure it’s a safe place for them.

Contamination also exists in some foods, yet it’s deemed healthy and completely safe to consume – clearly not! And houses have been built on polluted grounds many times, but sadly as immigration levels get bigger under the Tories, we as a country are having to keep lowering the criteria in terms of building regulations for housing estates, and I can guarantee that the people asserting the site is safe will not be the ones who will be living there.

We appear to be building houses everywhere. Any scrap of green belt and it’s being excavated and built on and concreted over at an alarming rate, but they don’t care because they’re under tremendous pressure to build absolutely anywhere.

The value of the land has increased and so has the need for housing, but there really isn’t enough land in this country to support our ever-growing population, so industrial and polluted land is being overturned for its next suitable use.

Someone authorised the burial of drums of cyanide, which is utter madness, and now, someone is possibly going to have to live with it just beyond their back gardens, and people will buy that legacy that could spill into the local groundwater system or emerge as a gas. Makes you wonder what other treasures have been squirrelled away, around the country, for future generations to enjoy.

Five-Year Rail Strike Threat From Union Boss

Brits have been warned that rail strikes could continue for five years, as Sir Keir Starmer faces calls to get off the fence and condemn the action.

Train drivers staged their latest strike yesterday, causing misery for Brits attempting to get to events such as the FA Cup Final at Wembley and the Epsom Derby.

It was the third disruption for rail services in the course of a week, and Aslef union general secretary Mick Whelan made it clear that there was no end in sight for the dispute.

He told Sky News that they didn’t want to be on strike, but they were in this, even if it took them four years, five years or more to get a resolution, and they would do what it took to get that resolution.

He said that they’ve gone four years without a pay rise, as have many other sectors and many other workers, but that if they stop now after four years, what will happen? They won’t get a pay rise next year, the year after that, or the year after that.

Mick Whelan claimed he’d not spoken to anybody from the Government in more than six months. However, the government insists a fair pay offer has been made.

The Tories pointed out that Aslef is affiliated to the Labour Party, and called on Sir Keir Starmer to condemn the walkouts.

Tory Deputy Chairman Lee Anderson said that it was time for Slippery Starmer to get off the fence and condemn these strikes causing misery for commuters and businesses, but that he was too under the thumb of his union bosses, the ones who really control the Labour Party.

If they’re threatening for this to last 5 years, then an alternative approach is needed.

This needs to be stopped now, along with all the publicity, but then again any publicity is good publicity for them right now. Meanwhile, while these industrial disputes go on people have to suffer when trains don’t turn up, which means they could lose their job because they can’t get into work.

And if these strikers can afford to keep this action going for 5 years or more and are managing with the loss of earnings, then presumably they don’t really need a pay rise in order to live.

They’re the most disliked bunch of strikers at the moment, but it will all be doom and gloom around the corner for them, and if this carries on they will be redundant in 5 years and the rail will probably become automated, and these strikers are so blinkered by their union’s agendas.

Don’t they realise that some people have found ways around travelling on strike days and will continue to do so? Brits have a way of adapting to situations – we’re extremely resilient, don’t they realise this?

And destroying the industry that you work in because they’re trying to win a political strike is about as ridiculous as it gets.

What does all of this remind you of? Cast your mind back to the seventies – the miner’s strike. It ended up with the mines closing because Arthur Scargill believed he could dictate to the government, how wrong he was. Tons of striking miners lived the rest of their lives on the dole and wished they hadn’t listened to the unions, and mining villages perished because there was no work.

Dropping Like Flies

British children are on IV drips in Turkish hospitals after falling ill at a five-star TUI resort, with one little girl’s worried mother saying she’s suffered seizures and guests said to be dropping like flies.

The Rixos Sungate Resort saw a spate of food poisonings over the Easter holidays, and now TUI is investigating as Brits staying at the resort for the half term have reported appalling new symptoms.

Jenny Hopkins, from Bagshot, Surrey, told a newspaper outlet her eight-year-old daughter was passing green diarrhoea and became so dehydrated she started fitting.

Jenny Hopkins said she was rushed to the Medical Park Antalya Hospital, where she’s been since Thursday, and has so far been on nine IV drips, and the mother of two said TUI had done very little to help and that she and her husband, James, have had to fork out £3,000 in medical bills so far.

Another mother claimed she was told her daughter’s faeces contained bacteria like salmonella, and that doctors told her lots of people at the all-inclusive hotel had come down with a similar illness.

A video seen by a newspaper outlet showed numerous people being treated in the hotel’s medical centre. Guests have also reported being confined to their rooms in agony, with one newlywed saying his holiday had turned into the honeymoon from hell.

Linda Leitch, one of the distraught mothers whose eight-year-old was rushed to hospital after suffering from dehydration, described the situation at the luxury resort as carnage.

The Leitch family, from Chatham, Kent, say they spent £5,000 on their dream trip, only for their youngest daughter to come down with what Linda believes is food poisoning.

Linda said her daughter started feeling ill at 2 am on Thursday and was violently sick, with severe stomach cramps and a really high temperature.

She said that they put it down to the deserts she ate or the beef because it was the only thing she ate that they didn’t.

Chloe was put on a drip in the hotel’s clinic after severe vomiting and diarrhoea and was unable to keep down water, but her family decided she needed an ambulance at 4 am on Friday after a night of not being very responsive.

The family say they went to the reception in the early hours on Friday after the hotel said they would get them an ambulance.

Half an hour later, they claim, they were told they had to sort out the ambulance themselves, with Cloe not getting to the hospital until 10.30 am.

This is really bad for a 5-star hotel. In fact, it’s bad no matter how many stars the hotel has, but as a 5-star hotel, you would expect the best of the best, not the worst of the worst, and Turkey’s star rating system is clearly lower than in the United Kingdom.

It appears that star ratings mean nothing. Five star doesn’t necessarily mean good hygiene and good food practice. Some stars are added for facilities, conferences, entertainment and multilingual staffing et cetera, and each country has its own criteria for giving stars, and you can’t even trust the reviews these days.

However, this can happen anywhere in the world.

Travel agents should take some accountability. They sold the customer the holiday, so have a contract with the holidaymaker, and they should be ensuring that the hotel is everything it claims to be, and this includes a safe stay.

Good luck getting compensation from TUI because they know the customer’s lawyer’s bill will be higher than the compensation figure so most people will give up.

Once Again, It Happened!

It was just two months into his term that President Joe Biden sparked concerns by stumbling and falling on the stairs of Air Force One.

Since then, it’s been a downward trajectory when it comes to incidents where the most senior president in US history has lost his balance or hit the floor.

Joe Biden, 80, will be hitting the campaign trail trying to convince most Americans, and even many Democrats, that he’s up for the position a second time around, but his latest fall at the Air Force Academy in Colorado, where he had to be helped back up, will raise more questions.

A Washington Post ABC News poll conducted in May found just one-third of Americans believe Joe Biden is in good enough physical health for the position and six in 10 said he doesn’t have the mental sharpness.

Doctors have determined he’s healthy, but have said his gait remains stiff and that it could get worse as time goes on.

His age has already become a central issue of the 2024 campaign, with Republican contender Nikki Haley calling for all politicians over 75, including 76-year-old Donald Trump, to be subjected to competency tests.

In March 2021, Joe Biden stumbled up the stairs while boarding Air Force One. Joe Biden, then 78, was boarding the aircraft at Joint Base Andrews just before midday for a flight to Atlanta when he stumbled.

He grabbed onto the railing, steadied himself and kept going but lost his footing a second time and then a third.

On the third trip, he fell to his knees. He got back up, then moved on up the stairs before giving a salute at the top, then vanished into the aircraft.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre told reporters that he was ‘100 per cent fine’.

The White House blamed the wind, but it wasn’t the only time Joe Biden would struggle to navigate the steps. 

Joe Biden was also at his beach house with his wife Jill for the weekend and when he went out for a bike ride, he stopped briefly to answer questions from the press when he topped to the side and hit the tarmac.

Looks like Joe Biden is collapsing in the same way that the US is slowly sinking – sad but true! And one of these days poor Joe won’t be able to get back up again and neither will the US.

The US clearly needs a maximum age limit to hold office as well as a minimum age limit to run.

He always reminds me of the modern-day version of ‘Benny Hill’ but without the brains, and I always expect the ‘Benny Hill’ theme tune to cut in when poor Joe takes a tumble.

Right now, the world is laughing at the US, which means their enemies must sense their weakness, but not as bad as when the orange clown was in charge.

Being a person from England, I always felt that the president of the US was a person of tremendous power, someone who’s unstoppable, but with this president, it feels like the White House is a retirement home.

I can’t believe that Joe Biden is the best the Democrats can offer as a prospective President. He may have been electable 4 years ago, but it’s become apparent that his health is in decline.

Joe Biden may be 80 years old, but I know 80-year-olds who still ride motorbikes and run for buses, so it’s not his age and clearly, something more profound.

California’s Beaches May Disappear By The End Of The Century To The Tune Of 70 Per Cent

Vast swathes of California’s beaches could be lost to climate change, a recent newspaper has predicted, with 25-70 per cent of the state’s beaches totally eroded by the end of this century.

The study, published in March, was produced by five scientists from the USGS Pacific Coastal & Marine Science Centre, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the University of New South Wales, Sydney.

The five looked at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach and analysed satellite imagery of the beach over two decades.

They then took the entire 1,100-mile coastline of California and used their models to foretell how climate change would impact the beaches, using a predicted rise in sea levels of 1.6 feet to 10 feet over the next 80 years.

The authors wrote that by 2100, the model estimates that 25-70 of California’s beaches may become completely eroded due to sea level rise scenarios of 0.5 to 3.00 m, respectively, and that satellite data assimilated modelling system presented here was generally applicable to a medley of coastal settings around the globe owing to the global coverage of satellite imagery.

The authors warned that several well-known beaches were at risk, among them Point Arena and Humboldt Bay in Northern California, Pismo Beach and Morrow Bay in Central California, and Newport Beach and San Clemente in Southern California.

The study, cited by the news website SFGate, is yet to be peer-reviewed.

It follows on from a comparable study in 2017, by the same group of researchers, who discovered then that 31 to 67 per cent of beaches in Southern California were at risk of being destroyed.

The author concludes that the model predictions, although subjected to considerable uncertainty, indicate that significant impacts to the shoreline may occur due to accelerated sea level rise.

The author also said that it’s likely that numerous beaches in California would need significant management efforts, e.g., beach nourishments, sand retention, armouring, dune restorations as well as other engineering and nature-based solutions in order to maintain existing beach widths and the many services provided.

Experts are also extremely concerned about rising sea levels but clash on the predicted rise.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted last year that sea level would rise up to eight inches in California and along the West Coast in the next 25 years.

However, the experts have been saying this for a long time, and it’s always in the next 20 years or so, and they’re always telling us that some catastrophe will happen, whether it is natural or not.

You have to admit though, the climate has altered drastically over the years. I can remember when I was a child, the snow would come up to my knees, now kids barely know what snow is.

These are model predictions and are subject to significant uncertainty – purely conjecture.

Now is, ‘by the end of the century’ time frame, and the word ‘could’ tells a lot about the knowledge of these ‘so-called’ experts.

One thing that can be deduced from this very ‘important research’ is that they have simply no clue and are just playing guessing games to fit this ridiculous climate narrative.

The thing to look for, is financing these studies, you’d have to look at those people who are pouring money into them, and who want a particular outcome, and if you’re a scientist dependent on grant funding, then it’s in their best interest to show ‘findings’ that align with what their funder is paying them to find, because if you’re given a bunch of money and find the ‘wrong’ result, then you don’t expect to get any more money.

In Advance Of Today’s 4 pm Deadline, Ministers Are Preparing To Take Their Own COVID Inquiry To Court Over Demands For Boris Johnson’s Uncensored WhatsApp Conversations And Diaries

Ministers are gearing up to take the official COVID inquiry to court over its demand they hand over unredacted messages from Boris Johnson by this afternoon.

The Cabinet Office is unwilling to meet the 4 pm deadline set by the investigation into how the pandemic was handled to release, in full, the ex-prime minister’s WhatsApp conversations and diaries.

Probe chairman Baroness Hallett, who was hired by Boris Johnson, has warned that failure to comply with her demand to release the material under the Inquires Act would amount to a criminal offence, but ministers are resisting, believing that she’s asking for unambiguously irrelevant evidence that would represent a serious intrusion of privacy.

It means that ministers could end up taking action in the High Court to limit the reach of an official inquiry it set up.

They’ve already provided more than 55,000 documents, 24 personal witness statements and eight corporate statements, with parts that lawyers for the Government have considered irrelevant to the investigation having been redacted.

The Cabinet Office believes the inquiry doesn’t have the power to compel it to release the irrelevant material as it could set a dangerous precedent.

Ministers are also concerned that WhatsApp messages could identify junior officials.

Last night Whitehall sources told a newspaper outlet that there was no change in the Cabinet Office’s position, but discussions between lawyers continued amid hope that there could be a middle ground. One insider said that it wasn’t a case of an everything-or-nothing approach.

If there’s no breakthrough, the Government could seek to challenge Lady Hallett’s demand by way of judicial review.

According to the notice seeking the unredacted messages, the inquiry is requesting conversations between Boris Johnson and a host of government figures, civil servants and officials, including England’s chief medical officer Professor Sir Chris Whitty, and messages with then foreign secretary Liz Truss, then health secretary Matt Hancock and then chancellor Rishi Sunak have also been requested.

The inquiry had also asked for copies of the 24 notebooks containing contemporaneous notes made by Boris Johnson in clean unredacted form, save only for any redactions applied for reasons of national security sensitivity.

In a ruling last week, Lady Hallett repudiated the idea that the inquiry’s request was unlawful. She said in her response that the demanded documentation was of potential relevance to the inquiry’s lines of investigation.

How on earth can ministers give their WhatsApp messages to journalists to sell books but refuse to hand them over to a public inquiry that the Government set up in the first place? Because they’re third-rate, self-serving housemaids who are actually handling this country.

What does Boris Johnson have to hide, well, apparently quite a lot by the looks of things.

The fact is, Boris Johnson’s leadership during the pandemic was full of failures and breaches of ethics, but the Tories will whitewash anything to protect those who are blameworthy.

Makes you wonder how Boris Johnson got voted in. How on earth did he do it? He told the gormless shriekers that he’d get Brexit done for them and that they were all special little winners, and he knew that he had to tell them that they were special, but the clever fat Neanderthal fed them lies so that he would get their vote, and they didn’t just vote for him once, they voted for him twice!

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